This week in Ceasefire

This week in Ceasefire brings us an impressive collection of articles, interviews and blogs. Including exclusive interviews with Mark Fisher and Noam Chomsky, dispatches from the US and Latin America, new columns from Corin Faife, Dave Bell and Rizwaan Sabir and much more.

Mark Fisher’s book ‘Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?’ is a persuasive diagnosis of contemporary society, an analysis of its political impasses and a call for fresh organization and thought. In a wide-ranging interview, from Spinoza to Deleuze to Wall-E, from Supernanny to post-autonomist theory, Ceasefire‘s Alex Andrews talked to Mark Fisher about his book, education, the internet and the prospect of moving beyond capitalist realism.

In 2007, the police installed a network of cameras around specific Birmingham areas. This was, they claimed, in order to fight against crimes such as drug-dealing. As the publication of a governmental report confirmed on Thursday, they lied. In fact, the cameras were used to spy on an entire community. In this week’s On Security column, Rizwaan Sabir examines an extraordinary story of cynicism and incompetence and says that in terms of winning hearts and minds, the police has its work cut out.

With so much going wrong with our world, we still find it easier to focus our resentment and antipathy onto one single avatar: “The Banker”, “The System”, “The Man”. As a result, the BP oil spill disaster had a far bigger impact on the public psyche than the far worse ongoing effects of global warming. As Corin Faife argues in this week’s Modern Times column, it might be time to come up with a better target: The Beast.

In this week’s Deserter’s Songs column, Dave Bell revisits critical dystopia through the music of the Canadian band Silver Mt.Zion, which expresses a juxtaposition of horror and hope better than any other he knows. Their pained, sorrowful and always beautiful music invites the listener to meditate on the horrors of US imperialism; the ineptness of Canadian politicians and the general “shit and dismay” of a world in which neoliberal capitalism has run amok.

In the news this week in Latin America: Brazil’s government bails out the Petrobras oil company, Mexican mayors escape to the US in fear for their lives, rising insecurity in Argentina according to President Kirchner herself and much more. Ceasefire correspondent Tom Kavanagh delivers his weekly round up of what’s been going on south of the border.

Last week, Mark Zuckerberg, the Billionaire founder of Facebook, announced a $100 million dollar donation to Newark’s crumbling public education sector. Much of the media attention has focused on how this coincided with the release of The Social Network, a biopic casting Zuckerberg in a negative light. However, the much larger and more pressing issue was ignored: that of why the US public school system is so desperately reliant on private donations in the first place. Ceasefire‘s US correspondent Humza Tahir reports.

In a new regular column, Chess Corner, Paul Lam, Ceasefire‘s very own chess guru, explores the enduring mystique of the chess world. Lam brings us the latest news on the various intrigues, rivalries, political machinations and, of course, epic duels. In his first column, Lam looks at what makes chess such a powerful obsession for so many.

For our many francophone (and francophile) readers, Ceasefire is launching a new blog entitled… well, ‘Le Blog’. This will bring you Ceasefire‘s trademark sharp analysis and fresh wit but en Francais!! In this week’s instalment, Ceasefire‘s Canada correspondent Yassine Hamouni looks into what the fates of two women, Theresea Lewis, executed last week in the US, and Sakineh Mohammedi, facing death by stoning in Iran, tell us about how human sympathy is, very often, deeply shaped by the political.

In case you’ve missed it, our exclusive major interview with Noam Chomsky, the world’s greatest public intellectual, who answered our questions on the Middle East, global warming, the financial crisis, the future of the left, Iran, and on why all states are unacceptable. Chomsky’s views on the tea party movement, among other things, are likely to surprise many.

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